If you do a few things when gardening in the fall, you can provide food and shelter for animals, and take care of the soil and plants in your garden. Here you will find all the work for the natural garden in autumn.
Autumn always presents garden owners with major challenges, because suddenly there is a lot of work that needs to be done to prepare the garden for winter. Those who have dedicated themselves to gardening close to nature can take it a little more relaxed in autumn: instead of removing leaves, old wood and dried inflorescences, you can leave them in the garden, because they can often still be used sensibly. In our article, we will tell you which gardening tasks are required in the natural garden in autumn and which tasks are omitted in contrast to conventional gardening.
Natural garden in autumn: leave the leaves behind
The colorful leaves drive many a gardener crazy in autumn when they fall on lawns and beds and have to be laboriously raked together. In a natural garden you can save yourself this work without a guilty conscience: Leaves play an important role as natural winter protection for flora and fauna. Animals in particular, including hedgehogs, insects and toads, use piles of leaves as quarters for their hibernation. In addition, autumn leaves serve as food for many larger and smaller soil organisms, which break up the leaves and reassemble them into valuable humus, so that the leaves serve as natural soil fertilizer. Attention: Lawns should not be covered by a thick layer of leaves during the winter, because the grass still occasionally carries out photosynthesis in winter.
Tip: Foliage with a lot of tannic acid or a high carbon content, for example from various conifer species, oaks, horse chestnuts, walnuts, beeches and poplars, rots very slowly and forms over time often a thick layer of raw humus on the floor over the years. Those who want to avoid such a rise in soil level can easily remove the half-rotted even in spring. Leaves from birch, elm and hornbeam rot much faster and can often be left lying around.
Who is not totally on the order imIf you want to do without a garden and, for example, remove leaves from paved areas or sidewalks, you should always use a rake or broom, or a leaf blower if necessary. Leaf vacuums have no place in a natural garden, because they not only disturb the garden animals with their loud noises, the vacuums also suck in numerous microorganisms and insects. The raked leaves can then be piled up elsewhere in the garden as shelter for animals or used as frost protection for trees and shrubs. Other useful uses for autumn leaves in a natural garden can also be mulching beds or composting. With the latter, however, it should be noted that the rotting of leaves often takes a very long time. So that the leaves do not hinder the composting of your other organic waste, you should therefore create a separate compost heap for leaves and, if necessary, support the rotting process by adding nitrogen.
Tip: Diseased fallen leaves, for example from trees with scab, shotgun disease or rust, should not be composted if possible, but removed from the garden. If the infested foliage remains in the garden, pathogens can survive in it, the infection pressure increases considerably in the following year and endangers the harvest or makes the use of pesticides necessary.
Create winter quarters for animals
When the temperatures and the first leaves fall, numerous animals start looking for suitable winter quarters. Those who do not have the luxury of moving to warmer regions as a migratory bird often look for a retreat in the garden. It is therefore all the more important that the natural garden has enough places to retreat to in winter. Deadwood and leaves should therefore never be cleared away in the natural garden in autumn, as they provide a good retreat for hedgehogs and insects. If you want to give the hedgehog additional support in autumn, you can place a hedgehog house at a suitable location as winter quarters. Insects can also be helped by building an insect hotel.
Native shrubs and trees provide hiding places for birds and also serve as a source of food. You can also hang up new nesting boxes when gardening in autumn - these are not used for breeding in winter, but many birds appreciate them as protection from the weather. And you can also support birds in the garden with a bird feeder. Because autumn guidesthe high season for wild bird feeding. With our Plantura scatter feed, for example, you can offer numerous garden birds nutrient and energy-rich strengthening in the cold half of the year.
If you don't have a compost heap yet, you should create one quickly in autumn: compost in a natural garden is not only used as a natural fertilizer - since the compost heap stays pleasantly warm even in winter, common toads like to use it as a hiding place. Likewise, dry stone walls or piles of stones can be created in autumn, which are used by slowworms, toads and various insects for hibernation.
Even if old and dead trees are often used in autumn and winter, they should be left standing in a natural garden if possible, because numerous animals such as bats like to overwinter in tree holes and hollow trees in particular. Instead of winter, it is therefore better to use March to cut down old trees, since most animals have already ended their hibernation by then. Important: From March 30th, the felling and heavy pruning of trees and bushes is already prohibited again because of the breeding birds.
Tip: A good alternative to felling old and rotten trees is a radical pruning. All parts of the tree that are at risk of breaking are shortened so that there is no longer any risk of falling, but the rest of the trunk is left in the garden. Planted with climbing roses or ivy, such tree trunks are not only a great eye-catcher, but also serve as an ideal shelter for garden animals in the years to come.
Create Benjes hedge
When gardening in autumn, many branches and twigs result from pruning work. And often you don't know what to do with it: piles of brushwood have a great added value for the fauna in the garden, but they quickly appear untidy, especially in smaller gardens, and are therefore not popular with all gardeners. A good alternative for the natural garden is therefore the installation of a so-called Benjes or deadwood hedge. With this, woody sections are loosely stacked on top of each other and fixed with wooden posts, creating a decorative privacy screen. But the Benjes hedge is not only visually impressive - if you plant the hedge in the natural garden in autumn, you can soon see that many garden dwellers choose the hedge as a place of retreat. Hedgehogs, edible dormouse and small reptiles like to use the Benjes hedge as a place to hibernate, but common toads and numerous insect species also find a suitable retreat there. in theIn spring, the Benjes hedge quickly becomes a nursery, because robins, wrens and Co. find a nesting place in the dead wood. But this garden element not only serves as a living space, but also creates new life itself: while the wood slowly rots, new plant seeds accumulate in the hedge and begin to germinate, so that after a few years a lively, he althy wild hedge grows out of the loose pile of dead wood.
Leave fallen fruit as food for animals
Often the fruit trees are so full in autumn that you can hardly keep up with the harvest. The result: There are large numbers of apples, pears and plums lying under the trees as fallen fruit. Many gardeners now tend to simply rake up and discard the fruit. You can still use the fruit sensibly: Fallen fruit with only small bruises can still be processed wonderfully into jams or preserves. The rest of the fallen fruit can simply be left in its place and will be gratefully accepted by all kinds of garden animals as a source of food. Many bird species in particular are happy about fresh fruit as a food source in autumn and winter, but many useful insects are also grateful for the extra portion of food. If you are worried that wasps will be attracted to the fallen fruit and possibly sting, you can also collect the fallen fruit and place it in a more secluded corner of the garden. In this way, the animals can still benefit from the fallen fruit without getting in the way of humans.
Tip: In contrast to fallen fruit, so-called fruit mummies, i.e. fruit that has remained on the tree due to illness, should definitely be removed. These often contain spores of pathogens that can reinfect the tree the following year - removal is therefore essential to keep the tree he althy.
Leave seeds and dried perennials standing
For a long time it was considered part of the autumn work to cut back dried perennials and remove the seeds. You should save yourself this work in a natural garden: in fact, the remains of perennials and flowers can still be really useful. The nutritious seeds are a wonderful source of food for numerous species of birds, and hollow stems and lagging leaves provide ideal winter habitat for insects. In addition, the renunciation of the pruning also bringsAdvantages for the plant, as the dried stems and leaves often already protect the newly formed shoot buds and serve as a natural winter protection. There is only one case in which scissors should be used in a natural garden in autumn: If a plant is dead or diseased, it is necessary to remove all affected parts of the plant so that the disease is not transmitted to other plants.
Tip: If you want to multiply perennials or vegetables next year, you should use the time and carefully collect the seeds. Dried and stored in a dark, dry place, they are perfect for next year's sowing.
Sow green manure
When autumn and winter move in in the natural garden, the beds often become bare as well. Unfortunately, vegetable beds in particular often lie fallow in autumn and winter. You can not only green the beds in the natural garden in autumn and winter, but above all they are useful. So-called green manures over the winter have several advantages: On the one hand, the plants protect the garden soil from erosion and in many cases offer garden animals a place to hide. On the other hand, foundation plants primarily serve as a natural soil improvement, because many of them bring nitrogen into the soil and ensure good loosening of the soil through their roots. In addition, the soil is covered and this heat insulation benefits soil life in particular. Suitable plants for green manure in autumn are, for example, winter vetch (Vicia villosa) or red clover (Trifolium pratense).
Plant native shrubs and shrubs
Autumn is the ideal time to plant shrubs and perennials and thus redesign your garden. This also applies to the natural garden: In autumn, new trees, shrubs, perennials and hedges can be planted here. You should primarily make sure that the new garden dwellers are also native to Germany. Unfortunately, exotic plants, such as those often found in the garden trade today, sometimes have the disadvantage that they are cultivated sterilely and therefore have neither pollen nor nectar ready, or that they cannot be used by native animals due to a foreign flower design. It is all the more important to have a range of plants that are as beautiful as they are useful in your own garden: native shrubs often offer birds a good place to hide and often bear fruit in autumn and winterrepresent a valuable source of food - and also enrich the winter garden with their bright colors. Not only because of their flowers, but also because of their ecological added value, insect-friendly perennials and bee-friendly shrubs are an enrichment for every garden, because they offer a wide variety of animals a source of food.
Every natural garden is an enrichment for the environment. You can find out what needs to be considered when caring for and designing a natural garden in our special article.